Screenplay:Garrett Fort, from a story by John L. Balderston, suggested by the works of Bram Stoker

Synopsis: Two nervous policemen enter the crypt of Carfax Abbey, where they find a body lying at the foot of the stairs. At that moment, Professor Von Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) emerges from an inner room in the crypt. The sergeant (Halliwell Hobbes) demands to know whether he killed the man lying at their feet. Von Helsing tells them that Count Dracula did it…and that he has just killed Count Dracula. Von Helsing is arrested and taken to Scotland Yard, where he tells his story to the Commissioner, Sir Basil Humphrey (Gilbert Emery). He asks to see, not a lawyer, but a former student of his, the psychiatrist Dr Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger). Sir Basil warns Von Helsing that if he persists in talking about vampires, he will either be executed for murder, or committed to an asylum. Meanwhile, at the police station at Whitby, a woman swathed in black from head to foot appears as if from nowhere. She asks to see the body of Count Dracula and, when the constable (Billy Bevan) refuses, draws him to look closely at her ring, at which he stares transfixed… When the sergeant returns, he finds the constable insensible, and the body of Count Dracula gone… Out in the fog-bound woods, the Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden) lights a pyre, burning Dracula’s body to ashes. She then cries exultantly that she is free of his curse at last. The following night, the Countess tries to celebrate her release, but her manservant, Sandor (Irving Pichel), convinces her that nothing has changed, that she is still a creature of the dark. The Countess dons her cape and her ring and goes out into the night, where she approaches a man in evening-dress… As daylight approaches, the Countess returns to her rooms, handing her blood-stained cape to Sandor and retreating to her coffin… Janet Blake (Marguerite Churchill) tracks her employer, Dr Garth, to Scotland, telling him that his old friend Professor Von Helsing needs his help. Back in London, Garth tells Von Helsing that he cannot believe his story, but nevertheless promises to help him if he can. At an evening party, Garth is introduced to the Countess, by whom he is instantly struck, much to Janet’s annoyance. The conversation turns to the Von Helsing case, and Garth reveals that the murder charge will probably be dropped, as they cannot find Dracula’s body. He also diagnoses Von Helsing’s belief in vampires as a form of obsession, which can be cured by psychiatry. The Countess begs Garth to visit her at her apartment, claiming that she wishes to discuss his ideas further. There, she confesses that she feels herself controlled by a power from beyond the grave, one that fills her with horrible urges that she cannot overcome. Garth tells her that the way to cure an obsession or an addiction is to confront it head on and fight it. When he has gone, the Countess tells Sandor that she will be painting at her studio, and sends him out to find a girl—to model for her. Sandor smiles…

Comments: All throughout the early 1930s, Universal Studios teetered on the brink of financial disaster, chiefly because of the company’s policy of making the bulk of its output costly prestige productions, instead of employing its rivals’ tactic of supporting a few quality films with numerous low-cost programmers. On several occasions a big success managed to hold off the inevitable – All Quiet On The Western Front, which would win a Best Picture Oscar towards the end of 1930, helped, as did the unexpected one-two punch of Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931 – but the writing was on the wall.

In 1935, a run of expensive failures finally forced the studio into some belated cost-cutting. Nevertheless, Carl Laemmle Sr obstinately refused to surrender his long-standing strategy altogether, and took out a loan in order to fund the making of Show Boat. The borrowed quarter of a million was not enough, however: the production ran $300,000 over budget. In March, 1936, the loan was called in, and “Uncle Carl” was forced out of the studio he had founded more than twenty-five years before.

A year before this, Universal had finally made good on a long-standing plan to produce a sequel to Frankenstein, one repeatedly frustrated by the studio’s inability, professionally speaking, to get James Whale and Boris Karloff in the same place at the same time. Bride Of Frankenstein, when it finally went into production, was a lavish effort costing around twice what the original film had. Its success had a predictable effect upon the studio, which immediately began to lay plans for a sequel to its other great 1931 triumph, Dracula. Initially, Dracula’s Daughter was conceived along the same expensive lines: a major production that would reunite the original cast and tell the story of the Count’s vampiric origins before picking up the story in more or less contemporary times. And being still in favour with the studio, James Whale was slated to direct.

But circumstances conspired to consign these notions to the scrap heap. It was 1936 before the film actually went into production, by which time the Production Code was beginning to bite, and bite hard: horror films in general, and Universal horror films in particular, were a major target. The production of Bride Of Frankenstein had been a battleground, with Joseph Breen taking personal offence at the film’s – which is to say, James Whale’s – treatment of sex and religion.

However, the Hayes Office wasn’t the only motivation for the, pardon the expression, eventual bloodlessness of Dracula’s Daughter. With its finances in a mess, Universal could scarcely afford to risk the lucrative overseas market (and again, Bride Of Frankenstein had been banned in several countries). The British censors, in particular, had instigated a public crusade against horror movies, denouncing them outright in an effort to discourage their production, banning a number of them, cutting others, and slapping the dreaded “A” rating on any that made it into cinemas anyway.

And so the plug was pulled on the planned version of Dracula’s Daughter. The budget was cut, and drastically. The name cast also vanished, to be replaced by a mixture of B-level stalwarts and newcomers, along with a smattering of British character actors there to remind the audience that we’re supposed to be in England. And the screenplay went into re-writes…and re-writes…and re-writes.

Officially, Dracula’s Daughter is credited to Garrett Fort. We might remember that Fort was also credited with the screenplay of Dracula, where he re-wrote the stage version of the story authored by John L. Balderston, who re-wrote the stage version authored by Hamilton Deane, who re-wrote Stoker’s novel.

(Got that? Pay attention, I’ll be asking questions later…)

Here, history repeating, Fort is again supposed to have based his screenplay upon “a story” by Balderston. The contribution of both gentlemen being whatever it may, at least four other writers worked uncredited on the screenplay. It is hardly surprising that, amongst such a crowd, Bram Stoker hardly rates a mention. The real mystery man, however, who did make the credits, is one “Oliver Jeffries”. Hollywood legend holds that this is a pseudonym for David O. Selznick, who had acquired the rights to Dracula’s Guest, the story upon which this film is – extremely loosely – based. While we cannot imagine that Selznick had any intention of making such a film himself, his foresight and business acumen did force Universal either to buy the rights from him, or face the possibility of a lawsuit.

The history of motion picture making is littered with examples of productions – the most famous example being, I suppose, Casablanca – that, by all known laws of logic, should have been a failure, but which instead surmounted such hurdles as constant re-writing and last minute re-casting to become greater than the sum of their parts. Alas, in the case of Dracula’s Daughter, the movie gods declined to smile. The film ended up being exactly what you would anticipate from such a production history, a patchwork effort full of inconsistent characterisations and gaping plot holes; one in particular.

The critic Andrew Sarris once famously conferred upon Edgar Ulmer’s 1957 pot-boiler, Daughter Of Dr Jekyll, a kind of immortality by observing snarkily, “Anyone who loves the cinema must be moved by The Daughter Of Dr Jekyll, a film with a scenario so atrocious that it takes forty minutes to establish that the daughter of Dr Jekyll is indeed the daughter of Dr Jekyll.” One wonders what Mr Sarris would have made of Dracula’s Daughter which, in the course of its rather haphazard seventy-one minutes, never does bother to clarify whether Dracula’s daughter is, in fact, Dracula’s daughter.

All this is not to say that Dracula’s Daughter is without worth or interest. On the contrary, there are some genuinely original and imaginative touches here; while the film’s own uncertainty about the story it is telling ends up making it interesting, if only inadvertently. However, the film is also guilty of continually undercutting itself, forcing even well-disposed viewers into the exasperating task of making allowances.

Dracula’s Daughter begins badly, very badly, with a large helping of the kind of “comedy” that taints so many films of this era, as two bumbling British bobbies stumble (for no readily apparent reason) into the crypt of Carfax Abbey, where they find the body of Renfield lying at the foot of the stone staircase, and where, in the next room, Count Dracula has just been despatched with a stake through the heart. (The embarrassing wax dummy that stands in for Bela Lugosi is the film’s low point, though this sequence finds a few other contenders.)

Although there is a pretense of continuity between Dracula’s Daughter and its predecessor, in fact this is as good as it ever gets. Our first glitch occurs immediately afterwards, as…well, as Edward Van Sloan’s character wanders into shot, and we discover that, between films, he has mutated from being Professor Van Helsing into being Professor Von Helsing.

The Professor obligingly declares that it was he who drove the stake through Dracula, and is promptly arrested. He is next seen comfortably ensconced in an armchair in the officer of the Commissioner of Scotland Yard, Sir Basil Humphrey—and indeed, we scarcely see him anywhere else (like, for instance, in a prison cell), thanks to his “position in the scientific world”, if you can believe that.

The Professor tells his tale – paraphrasing one of his famous lines from Dracula as he declares, “The strength of the vampire, Sir Basil, is that he is unbelievable!” – and we notice the absence of certain facts. While the powers that be might not believe a story about vampires, you would imagine that it would at least give them pause if the story were to be supported by corroborating evidence from such social luminaries as Dr Seward, Miss Mina Seward and Mr John Harker. For reasons best known to himself, however, the Professor never mentions their names, still less calls them as witnesses. In fact, given the timing of the opening scene, in which the two bobbies encounter Von Helsing while he is still wiping his hands following the staking of his archenemy, they should have seen John and Mina leaving the crypt.

In the face of Von Helsing’s unsupported assertions, a concerned Sir Basil offers some helpful advice about retaining legal council and what an English jury will and will not believe. And jolly nice of him it is, too.

(What we have here, of course, is an instance of one of the most cherished conventions of literature and film, which states that, unlike their American brethren, British law officers are always willing to lend a sympathetic ear to an eccentric story. This is a convention that extends well beyond the horror and science fiction genres: see, for example, the official reaction to Ray Milland’s “There’s-a-Nazi-in-my-cake!” story in Fritz Lang’s Ministry Of Fear.)

Now— All this is pretty painful, and it gets even worse, as we are served up another large dollop of Sergeant Stupid and Constable Clod. But at length our endurance is rewarded, as Dracula’s Daughter lifts to a whole new plane with the appearance of its leading lady.

As the mysterious Countess Marya Zaleska, Gloria Holden is the undisputed highlight of Dracula’s Daughter. Holden was a newcomer to Hollywood when this film was made. She would go on to achieve critical acclaim the following year in The Life Of Emile Zola, but beyond that her career was never what it might have been, perhaps because Holden simply wasn’t the usual Hollywood “type”. It is precisely that, however, that makes her so right here.

With black hair, huge dark eyes, finely chiselled features, and cheekbones you could cut diamonds with, Holden is perfectly cast as the enigmatic creature of the night. Her performance is good, too; but although she wrings what she can from the material she was given, her character is, in the end, too underwritten for her quite to achieve true iconic status.

Still, there is much to enjoy here, such as Holden’s exquisitely judged re-reading of the Count’s immortal line, “I never drink…wine”, or the Countess’s half-amused, half-taunting challenge to the sceptical Jeffrey Garth, “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your psychiatry!”

The Countess Marya Zaleska is one of thirties horror’s most interesting female characters—although it must be admitted that her intriguing ambiguities owe as much to the vagaries of an ill-structured screenplay as to any intent on the part of the film-makers. When we first set eyes upon Marya, she is swathed in a robe of black, only her eyes and a single white hand, a hand bearing the glowing jewelled ring that she uses to hypnotise her victims, visible. By all known indicators, she is a creature of evil.

Yet the speech she utters while she undertakes the ritual destruction of Dracula’s body gives us pause:

“Into the keeping of the lords of the flame and lower pits I consign this body,” intones Marya. “Let all baleful spirits that threaten the souls of man be banished… Be thou exorcised, O Dracula. May thy body, long undead, find destruction throughout eternity in the name of thy dark, unholy master…”

While the Universal horror movies always were rather loose in their use of the terms “son” and “daughter”, it seems at first glance that we are intended to take literally the title of Dracula’s Daughter. To do so immediately raises questions, however—and contradicts the fundamental nature of the vampire, an undead creature that can reproduce only via the processes of blood-drinking and infection. The suggestion that Marya is Dracula’s biological daughter runs in the face of all vampiric lore; yet the obvious alternative, that she is one of Dracula’s blood-victims, makes no sense either, as her situation is presented.

It is clear that Marya expects the destruction of Dracula’s body to free her from her state of vampirism—as it frees Mina Seward in the novel. But Mina, when her curse is lifted, knows it; Marya, clearly, isn’t quite sure. “Free! Free forever!” she exults at first; yet it takes only a few ominous words from her manservant, Sandor (more on his ambiguities in a moment), to send Marya hastening back to London before a new day can dawn: avoiding what, in spite of the ritual, she still fears will be the fatal power of the sunlight.

If Marya is one of Dracula’s victims, the destruction of the body should have freed her; if she has been a vampire all her life – or “life” – perhaps not; perhaps, with a vampire born – or “born” (dang, this is tricky!) – only a stake through the heart can get the job done. But in that case, why did Marya think the ritual would work? Wouldn’t she know?

But there is, of course, a third alternative: that Marya is suffering from a profound and controlling delusion; and while I don’t believe that the screenwriters meant to imply this, as Dracula’s Daughter stands the film provides more support for this theory than either of the others. In fact, it almost forces this reading upon the viewer from the moment of the ritual—not just with Marya’s uncertainty about whether the ritual itself has worked or not, but with her wielding of the cross: if she is really what she thinks she is, just not looking is not enough; she should not have been able to touch it!

(Consider, in contrast, the shocking moment in Dracula when an attempt to protect the vampirised Mina via a holy-water cross upon her forehead inflicts an agonising burn.)

The question presented in Dracula’s Daughter is not whether Marya is guilty of vampiric activity, but whether she is a vampire; whether she is undead. And if she is – if she was either born that way, or lived, then died, then became undead – if she has in truth been a practicing vampire for one hundred years, as the screenplay later implies – and if she has looked as she does now for all those years – how can she honestly think that her condition is one that might respond to psychotherapy?

Note, too, that never at any point do we see any supernatural act associated with Marya. She never transforms herself. She never shows herself impervious to everything save the stake and the daylight. Her hypnotism of her victims is true hypnotism, the mortal kind, as evidenced when Dr Garth examines someone recently in her thrall. Her inability to look at a cross tells us nothing; but her ability to touch one does.

In short, all of Marya’s symptoms can be interpreted as the manifestations of a mental illness—and that she is “ill”, and therefore curable, is what she most desperately wishes to believe. Small wonder that she attaches herself so desperately to Jeffrey Garth, when he begins holding forth on the various kinds of human obsession, and how they can be banished with the help of psychiatry.

Meanwhile, the character of Sandor does much to keep the waters muddy. On the evidence available, Sandor is human…yet when Marya holds the cross over Dracula’s pyre, he too must look away. On the other hand, he does not fear the dawn, as Marya does; there is only one coffin in the back of her studio. Most tellingly of all, it is made clear towards the end of the film that what Sandor expects in return for his service is immortality: that is, for Marya to make him a vampire.

The question, then, is whether Sandor knows that Marya is a vampire, or whether he has, rather, bought just as deeply into Marya’s delusion as Marya herself: folie à deux. The relationship between the two is profoundly disturbing. When Marya consults Garth about her “condition”, the psychiatrist insists that the greater part of any cure is the will of the individual to be cured. In saying so he draws an analogy with the treatment of alcoholism…but in truth, a far more accurate description of Marya’s situation (one not allowed by the Production Code, even if they had wished to be more explicit) is drug addiction. Marya reacts to Dracula’s death like an addict who has heard that her pusher has been busted: as if that was enough on its own to change her condition.

In this context, Sandor comes across as the worst kind of enabler. He doesn’t want Marya cured of her “addiction”. The evening after the ritual destruction of Dracula’s body finds Marya trying to convince herself that she is indeed free. She celebrates with music; she recalls memories of her mother and her childhood (memories which certainly do imply a biological connection to her “father”). But once again, Sandor is on hand to turn her thoughts, insisting that she is still a creature of the night, and that this night will be like all the ones that came before. He plays upon her fears and her self-loathing until she capitulates and goes out looking for a “fix”.

The roles enacted here are those of mistress and servant—but it is Marya who yields, donning her robe and her ring with Sandor’s assistance, and trolling the dark streets of London for a victim—and finding one. The next morning finds her hurrying back to her sanctuary, handing her blood-stained cape to Sandor and taking refuge in her coffin before the dawn can break…

Once Jeffrey Garth enters the picture, Sandor faces a greater challenge—but the fact remains that he understands Marya far better than Garth does, or ever will. When the psychiatrist encourages Marya not to run from her “horrible impulse”, but to, “Meet it; fight it!” – not realising, of course, what it is he is encouraging her to do! – Sandor is pleased. He knows very well that Marya’s addiction, whether it be vampiric or all too human, is as yet too strong for her; and when she puts Garth’s advice into practice and orders him to bring a girl to her studio – to “model” for her – Sandor obeys with alacrity.

Dracula’s Daughter is a film not much known these days, but as far as it is known, it is for the confrontation between Marya and the destitute young girl brought to her by Sandor: a confrontation that has seen this film enrolled in the ranks of gay cinema, and the Countess Marya Zaleska hailed as the screen’s first lesbian vampire.

While the inference of this scene is in one sense inescapable, once again it is difficult to decide what was actually intended by the film-makers. Certainly there was an acute awareness on their part of the implications of same-sex vampirism: when Dracula was in production, Carl Laemmle Jr refused to allow the Count’s attack on Renfield to be shown, so bothered was he by the possible homosexual overtones of such a scene. Lesbianism being, as always, considered less “threatening” than male homosexuality, the makers of Dracula’s Daughter finally got away with the scene in the studio, but it was re-written and re-shot several times before it passed censorship muster, and in the end we still do not see Marya’s attack upon the girl.

There is nevertheless an unsettling eroticism about this sequence, not least in the contrast between Nan Grey’s fair fragility and Gloria Holden’s dark imperiousness; while the intentness of Marya’s gaze as the girl disrobes before her is certainly open to more than one interpretation. “What’s the matter? Won’t I do?” Lili asks, becoming uncomfortable under Marya’s fixed gaze.

“Yes,” replies Marya in a distant voice. “You’ll do very nicely…”

Having already removed her blouse, Lili gestures towards the straps of her slip. “I suppose you’ll want these lowered?” she offers, sliding them down and leaving her neck and shoulders completely bare…and so sealing her own fate…

Given the vintage of Dracula’s Daughter and the cruel prevailing views of the time, the lesbian undertones of this sequence tend to support the reading of Marya as mentally disturbed. It is not unlikely that Marya’s expressed desire to be free of her “curse”, to “live as a woman”, to take her place “in the bright world of the living”, is meant as an expression of disgust at her “aberrant” sexuality.

In the depiction of Marya’s lifestyle, however, there does not seem to be anything so specific intended. Intriguingly, we are shown that she lives the kind of double life generally associated with wicked young men: that is, she keeps a “respectable” apartment for the entertainment of her “respectable” friends, but also secret rooms in a far less respectable locale, taken under an assumed name, for her more nefarious activities. She is also an artist—not a mere dilettante, but a professional. She is an aristocrat…and a foreigner…and she keeps a studio in Chelsea, for heaven’s sake! She is, in a word, decadent…and if her sexual preferences seem a little unfocused, that would be entirely in keeping with such a characterisation.

After all, we must not forget that Marya’s first victim, one of her own choosing, is a young man out on the town; while by the end of the film it is clear that her interest in Jeffrey Garth has become far more personal than professional. Overall, the sexual overtones of Marya’s behaviour seem rather less significant than the social ones: when she feeds on women she preys predominantly upon the lower classes, like her “father” before her; but when she pursues a man, her preference is unmistakably for a “toff”…

One of the most unexpected aspects of Dracula’s Daughter, considering when it was made, is its positive attitude towards the profession of psychiatry. It was common at this time, and for some years to come, for psychiatrists to be rather roughly handled in American films; to be regarded as quacks as best and con artists at worst; the butt of jokes if they were lucky, and unmasked as villains and criminals more often than I can remember. It was not, indeed, until the later years of World War II, with so many mental casualties in desperate need of help, that this attitude really began to change. For a film of 1936 to cast a psychiatrist as its hero is very surprising—and so too is the way in which Dr Garth conducts himself.

Initially Garth is completely disbelieving of Von Helsing’s stories of vampirism. Nevertheless, he still has sufficient faith in his old mentor to promise to help him, if only he can figure out how. But although he has not believed what Von Helsing has been saying, Garth has been listening…and as soon as physical evidence of the Professor’s claims begins to turn up, he recognises and accepts it for what it is, without any sign of that contrived and artificially extended scepticism that so many films insist upon as the way of the “scientific mind”—and which so often results in countless avoidable deaths, all in the name of “logic” and “rationalism”. Here, it takes only the puncture wounds on the throat of a single victim for Garth to start contemplating the impossible. All this is not to say that we in the audience entirely approve of the way Dr Garth conducts himself professionally, but this is certainly due to the distance between the time of the film’s production and our own. Dracula’s Daughter is hardly alone in this respect.

(On that subject, try watching a Dr Kildare film these days without gasping in horror at the various gross malpractices committed by the good doctor, all in the name of “having the courage to experiment”.)

There is, then, quite a lot of interest to be found in Dracula’s Daughter. What a shame that so much of the material in which it is embedded is so ill-conceived! Perhaps the film’s biggest blunder is its poorly written “romance” between Jeffrey Garth and his human love interest, Janet Blake. This is obviously intended to be the kind of love-hate relationship so common in the screwball comedies of this time, but instead of coming across as affection-concealed-by-hostility, much of the interaction between Garth and Janet seems very much like hostility of the most genuine kind. This is particularly true on Garth’s part, and really, we can’t blame him: Janet Blake is one of the most annoying “heroines” ever foisted onto an exasperated audience. She’s supposed to be “cute” and “spirited”, but take it from me, she’s just plain obnoxious!

In short, we simply do not believe that Garth cares so much for Janet that he would unhesitatingly offer his life – and his soul – to save hers. This weakness in the screenplay severely undermines the final act of Dracula’s Daughter, in which Marya, after her inability to control her “impulse” with regard to the tragic Lili, accepts that she cannot change—and decides that she wants as her immortal consort, not Sandor, but Jeffrey Garth.

To this end, she hypnotises and kidnaps Janet, using her as bait to lure Garth to Dracula’s castle; her castle. (Another hint of a “real” relationship between Marya and Dracula, I suppose; but then it’s not as if people were going to be queuing up to contest her right to the place.) This is the most bizarre part of the whole film. There is very little effort made in general to make Dracula’s Daughter contemporaneous with Dracula, particularly in terms of such things as the decor, the costumes, and the means of transportation; but even so, you hardly expect it when the various characters start jumping into planes and jetting off into the wilds of Transylvania! – and especially not when we arrive in “modern” Transylvania to find it still inhabited by the same old crowd of lederhosen-wearing knee-slappers.

Garth arrives at the castle to find Janet still trance-bound, and to have Marya make him the obvious offer: his life for Janet’s. If he will willingly join her and become one of the undead, Janet will be released unharmed. Garth agrees, but fate intervenes. Von Helsing, Sir Basil Humphrey and a couple of anonymous gendarmes (in Transylvania?) arrive at the castle at the critical moment—that is, just as Sandor is expressing his displeasure at Marya’s reneging on her promises to him by firing an arrow at her…and through her. He is about to put another one through Garth when he is shot dead by one of the gendarmes.

Marya, meanwhile, has staggered out onto and collapsed upon the ramparts of her castle, and the survivors duly gather around her to deliver the inevitable epitaph.

“She was beautiful when she died,” pronounces Von Helsing, “a hundred years ago…”

…a remark that means nothing and answers nothing. Had Marya been shot with a bullet, like Sandor, we should at last have known the truth about her; but a wooden arrow in the heart is, after all, just as fatal to a delusional human being as it is to one of the undead; and in this particular universe, vampires suffer no dissolution upon being “released”.

Who, then, was Marya Zaleska? – and what was she? It seems that we shall never know for sure. Dracula’s Daughter, like Marya herself, takes its secret to the grave.

16 Responses to Dracula’s Daughter (1936)

I love the artwork that wide poster (dd36-card1b, “More sensational than her unforgettable father”). It’s a very ‘tween-wars look, the human shape optimised for high-speed flight. (Not much of a match for Gloria Holden, though she has an interesting face too.)

“Why, no, I shall not call on my friends Dr Seward™ or Mina™ or John Harker™, for merely mentioning their names would require a whole separate set of rights payments.”

In one of the posters, the slogan is, “She gives you that weird feeling.” ‘Weird’ used to be used to signify only the supernatural, or other-worldly, that feeling you get when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Now it’s used for strange, silly, or just plain goofy. Any idea what it meant in 1936? It does make a difference in the sound of the slogan. The phrase ‘Weird Sisters’ in Macbeth isn’t as gripping now as it did a few centuries ago.
You mention Dr. Kildare. One of the movies did have him on trial for Medical Malpractice, helping a young woman at a car crash which resulted in her being paralyzed (which proved to be from a previously unknown condition). The only movie to hold him to account involved a situation which wouldn’t have qualified, at least in modern times. There are several Good Samaritan laws now (maybe not back then) which would have exonerated him.
Besides, everybody knew Dr. Gillespie was the real hero in those movies.

“Weird” was originally Scotts dialect for “fate”. The Weird Sisters were treated as witches in the play, but seem pretty clearly derived from the Fates/Norns, given their role.

I’m not nearly old enough to have been around in 1936, but I’ve always thought of the primary modern meanings of “weird” to be “otherworldly” or “strange” (in a scary/disturbing sense of the word). “Silly” or “goofy” seem like minor extrapolations to me.

Putting on my vampire pedant hat for a moment, in certain vampire mythologies vampires can have children with humans (usually male vampire / female human). In the southern Slavic stories these children were called dhampirs, and had varying amount of vampiric strengths and weakness. Vampire Hunter D and Marvel’s Blade are two famous fictional dhampirs. If Marya is a dhampir, this would explain her odd mismash of vampire traits; she might also quite literally be Dracula’s daughter.

Were the screenwriters aware of this? Almost certainly not, any resemblance to the dhampir legends is a coincidence arising from the chaotic scriptwriting process. But it is a good example of how expansive the vampire myths really are–virtually any fictional vampire can be linked to a mythological source. (Except for the ones that sparkle…)

speaking of Vampire lore, I was watching a movie with a friend, and at one point the Vampire-in-disguise tells his date’s son, Since you’re the man of the family, will you let me come in? I said, That guy’s a Vampire! Later on in the movie, the point is made again (can’t come inside without an invitation), and my friend said, You mean that’s true?
I said, well, not true, exactly, since vampires don’t really exist.

I wonder if the invitation rule can run into problems ala the, “Don’t feed mogwai after midnight” mockery presented in Gremlins 2. Does the invitation automatically revoke if the house is sold? What if someone lived in a cardboard box and the box is brought inside a house? I would think they would only be allowed in the box if invited in to the box earlier, but can we really know without SCIENCE! testing this? Is an unborn child automatically a homeowner without any paperwork being signed? Wait it out until the kid grows up? There are others which I’m sure nobody cares to spend time on, but this kind of thing keeps me up at night. The supernatural and legal conflicts may explain why nobody trusts either lawyers or vampires.

Likewise. In fact, this argument reminds me of my own review of Sinister, when I was trying to figure out what happens if the homeowners have no children. 😀

I think the necessity to invite a vampire in was deliberately ignored as the mythology got adpated for a mainstream audience, because of the sexual connotations of a “nice” girl inviting the vampire into her room. Instead they settled for someone being tricked or persuaded or hypnotised into removing guards like garlic and crosses—a passive “invitation”, rather than an active one. (Stephen King brought the concept back, in Salem’s Lot, so you see it more frequently these days.)

Night Gallery had an episode, The Funeral, where a vampire plans his own funeral. He and his friends have a great time, but the funeral parlor is severely damaged. The poor funeral director is pleased to get a full payment, covering all expenses, and looks forward to his next customer, recommended by the vampire.
The Ultimate Party, coming this fall.

Ah, true! – I should have considered the dhampir in my argument, though I don’t believe for a moment that was ever in the screenwriters’ minds. There’s no hint of drawing upon such a background in any of the Universal films.

The “invitation required” limitation only applies to a few strains of vampire folklore. Even most European vampires didn’t suffer that limit, and Asian vampires certainly didn’t. But then, it’s pretty much impossible to make any broad characterization about vampires beyond “quasi-humans that drink human blood”, because the sheer variety of vampire myths is staggering. I still find it hard to believe that the Penaggalon is an actual, historical legend and not some D&D dungeon master’s fever dream. [Oddly, while vampire myths can be found throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, the earliest reports of vampire like creatures in the Americas comes from the European settlers. Whether this is because the idea of the vampire did not make it to prehistoric America, or simply that the folklore was lost, is an open question.]

I will say that among more recent vampire lore, the Lost Boys movie uses the invitation rule to great effect.